Romanian Winter Sports Destinations In A Sustainable Development Context

During the past decades, winter sports tourism developed by planning and equipping mountain massifs for alpine skiing, snowboarding, sleighing etc.. Facilities were made, especially in the alpine area (with a fragile natural balance), in disregard to urbanism and environmental protection laws (e.g. the construction of roads in natural parks – for tourism ?!; clumps of secondary residences built without preliminary urban planning; real estate speculations and intensive allotments; elimination of agro-pastoral economic activities; lack of involvement of local population in the field of mountain tourism etc.). Thus, for a sustainable economic and environmental development in the Romanian mountainous and sub-mountainous areas, the paper presents a series of proposals aimed at leading towards a new vision in planning winter sports in Romania through the development of accommodation and recreation facilities at the foothills of the mountains and the promotion of agro-tourism in the mountainous and submountainous areas. The authors„ suggestions include: limiting or avoiding estate and leisure facilities in alpine and high mountainous area; economic and tourism revival of villages in the mountainous and sub-mountainous areas (agro-tourism) by taking over accommodation, catering and after-ski recreation facilities; the development of nonresidential ski areas and ski centers for week-end and youth tourism; revitalization of agro-pastoral activities etc..